[F]or at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet.

The documents suggest for the first time that either Warren or a Harvard administrator classified her repeatedly as Native American in papers prepared for the government in a way that apparently did not adhere to federal diversity guidelines. They raise further questions about Warren’s statements that she was unaware Harvard was promoting her as Native American.

Carmichael is late to the story, but she has acquired an attitude working it up, even adding a note of pattern recognition:

The administrator responsible for Harvard Law School’s faculty diversity statistics from 1996 to 2004, the period in question, was Alan Ray, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who, like Warren, has fair skin, blue eyes, and Oklahoma roots.

Has William Jacobson commented on this story? If so, I can’t find it, although he was at work on a related Globe story yesterday.

Jesse Washington, the AP’s man on the diversity beat, seizes the day to explore the metaphysical question at the heart of the Warren Saga: “What’s an American Indian? Warren case stirs inquiry.” Washington gives us the Cartesian approach to the story. She thinks she is, therefore she is. QED.

In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, Geoffrey Norman summarizes the story so far. Norman does a good job, but he quotes Christopher Caldwell’s favorable Weekly Standard article on Warren’s scholarship without analysis. Norman appears to take Caldwell at face value. Caldwell, however, was suckered by Warren. Warren’s scholarship is precisely as bona fide as her claim to Indian ancestry.

George Mason University School of Law Professor Todd Zywicki has been on Warren’s case for a while on the basis her shoddy scholarship. See, for example, Professor Zywicki’s Wall Street Journal column “In Elizabeth Warren we trust?” Professor Zywicki elaborated on his WSJ column in this video interview. Professor Zywicki has exposed Warren as an academic charlatan.